Foxglove The glove of the wee people The twenty species of foxglove are distributed naturally in Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. They are biennial and perennial members of the Scrophulariaceae or figwort family. Foxgloves commonly found in gardens include Digitalis purpurea , with its purple-spotted throat; D. lutea , the yellow or straw foxglove; and D. grandiflora , with apricot-pink flowers, and its numerous cultivars. Less common are the rusty foxglove, D. ferruginea , and D. lanata , the Grecian foxglove of the Mediterranean.
One species from the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain is D. dubia , named because of the original doubt that it was a true foxglove. The genus name, derived from the Latin word for finger, digitus , alludes to the flower''s resemblance to a glove or finger. The plant was so named by Leonhard Fuchs in 1542. In 1629 John Parkinson wrote, "We call them generally foxglove in English but some (as thinking it to be too foolish a name) do call them finger-flowers, because they are like unto the fingers of a glove, the ends cut off." The English name foxglove appears to be a corruption of folk''s-glove, the glove of the fairies or wee people. But some suggest that such a correlation is silly. The plant is also called fairy-fingers, and regardless of the etymological origin, these quaint names richly provide the plant with legends.
In some areas the plant is known as fox fingers, and associated stories suggest that the flowers are the gloves worn by foxes to keep dew off their paws. To northern Europeans, however, the shape of the flowers did not suggest a glove or finger, but rather a bell. An old Norwegian legend refers to digitalis as fox-bell ( revbjölla ) in the belief that when foxes wore them, the eerie sound of the bell would scare away hunters who collected fox tails for good luck. The English name may derive from the Anglo-Saxon word foxes-gleow , gleow being the word for a musical instrument of rings of bells. The plant has also been variously known as witches'' thimbles and fairy caps. The plant is known in French legends as les gants de Notre Dame , the gloves of the Virgin. In German, an old name for foxglove is fingerhut , for thimble. A rhyme by William Browne of Tavistock maintained the thought of foxgloves as gloves, which were being sought by Pan for his mistress: To keep her slender fingers from the sunne Pan through the pastures oftentimes hath runne, To pluck the speckled foxglove from their stemme And on those fingers neatly placed them.
The flower made English poet Abraham Cowley think of gloves, too: "The foxglove on fair Flora''s hand is worn/Lest while she gathers flowers she meets a thorn," But Christina Rossetti, taking a more realistic view, wrote in Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book of the improbable names of plants and animals, ending, No dandelions tell the time, Although they turn to clocks; Cat''s cradle does not hold the cat, Nor foxgloves fit the fox. Some species of digitalis are the source of the modern cardiac stimulant digitalin, a powerful glycoside that is used in the treatment of heart disease. But English apothecary Nicholas Culpeper said in the seventeenth century that it was used as a cure for "scabby heads" and as a remedy for king''s evil or scrofula, an inflammation of the lymph glands, which from the time of Edward the Confessor could supposedly be cured only by the king or queen. The medicinal properties of digitalis have been known for centuries. However, an old Welsh legend claims to be the first to prescribe it, because the knowledge of its properties came to the meddygon , the Welsh physicians, in a magical way. The legend is loosely based on the early thirteenth-century historical figure Rhiwallon, the physician to Prince Rhys the Hoarse, of South Wales. Young Rhiwallon was walking beside a lake one evening when from the mist arose a golden boat. A beautiful maiden was rowing the boat with golden oars.
She glided softly away in the mist before he could speak to her. Rhiwallon returned every evening looking for the maiden; when he did not find her, he asked advice from a wise man. He told Rhiwallon to offer her cheese. Rhiwallon did as he was told, and the maiden appeared and took his offering. She came ashore, became his wife, and bore him three sons. After the sons grew and the youngest became a young man, Rhiwallon''s wife rowed into the lake one day and returned with a magic box hinged with jewels. She told Rhiwallon that he must strike her three times so that she could return to the mist forever. He refused to hit her, but the next morning as he finished breakfast and prepared to go to the fields to work, Rhiwallon tapped his wife affectionately on the shoulder three times.
Instantly a cloud of mist enveloped her and she disappeared. Left behind was the bejeweled magic box. When the three sons opened it, they found a list of all the medicinal herbs, including the foxglove, with full directions for their use and their healing properties. With this knowledge the sons became the most famous of physicians. In the second part of the book-length poem The Botanic Garden (1791), Erasmus Darwin described Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health or hygiene, in the garb of the digitalis: Divine Hygeia, from the bending sky Descending, . Assumes bright Digitalis'' dress and air, Her ruby cheek, white neck, and raven hair. Four youths protect her from the circling throng, And like the Nymph the Goddess steps along. Darwin added in a footnote that foxglove was used to cure dropsy "where the legs and thighs are much swelled" in those "people past the meridian of their life.
" This cure was applied in Silas Marner (1861), George Eliot''s story of a linen weaver, when Silas treats a cobbler''s wife suffering from dropsy, "Recalling the relief his mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove." The foxglove has accumulated several symbolic meanings. Sir Walter Scott''s Lady of the Lake , a poem in six cantos published in 1810, includes a note on foxglove: "Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side,/Emblems of punishment and pride." And in the language of flowers, foxglove suggested both insincerity and "a wish." For centuries poets have been fascinated by the bell-shaped foxglove and have often included it in their floral descriptions. Christina Rossetti described the tall foxglove in "A Bride Song": Through the vales to my love! Where the turf is so soft to the feet And the thyme makes it sweet, And the stately foxglove Hangs silent its exquisite bells. In the late 1800s Thomas Edward Brown wrote "White Foxglove" in which he addressed the flower, but it shrank away and did not respond: White foxglove, by an angle in the wall, Secluded, tall, No vulgar bees Consult you, wondering If such a dainty thing Can give them ease. In Poetical Works (1821), a collection by John Keats, a sonnet describes a place "Where the deer''s swift leap/Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
" In Coleridge''s "The Keepsake" (1817), the passing of summer is marked when the foxglove tall Sheds its loose purple bells, or in the gust, Or when it bends beneath the upspringing lark, Or mountain-finch alighting. In book 8 of The Prelude , Wordsworth, reflecting on his youthful poetic faculties, wrote of the same season: Through quaint obliquities I might pursue These cravings; when the foxglove, one by one Upwards through every stage of the tall stem Had shed beside the public way its bells, And stood of all dismantled, save the last Left at the tappering ladder''s top, that seemed To bend as doth a slender blade of grass. Many poets have been struck by the beauty of foxgloves. Shakespeare overlooked the distinctive flower, probably because it is not common in the Midlands. But Jean Ingelow, Victorian poet and children''s author, wrote in "Divided" (1863) of foxgloves as an integral part of the natural landscape: An empty sky, a world of heather, Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom; We two among them wading together, Shaking out honey, treading perfume. In his elegy "In Memoriam" (1833, published in 1850) to friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly at the age of twenty-two of a cerebral hemorrhage, Tennyson expressed a profound sense of loss and regret for his friend''s death and looked expectantly to the return of the new year to "burst the frozen bud": Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little speedwell''s darling blue, Deep tulips dash''d with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire Through all the long history of the plant, tall foxgloves have graced the back borders of gardens. On a quiet spring evening one can almost hear the sound of little bells tinkling at one''s feet. Fritillary A diadem of gold, and richly grac''d Fritillaries, with bell-shaped flowers, are members of the Liliaceae.
The bulbous, perennial species of Fritillaria are native to the Northern Hemisphere and are found in the Mediterranean region, Asia, and western North America. The genus name Fritillari.